


TAKE BACK PLENTY

by ivorygates



Series: Bellemettle [3]
Category: Cammie'verse - Fandom, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-31
Updated: 2009-07-31
Packaged: 2017-11-26 11:32:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lt. Col. Cameron Evangeline Mitchell walks into Cheyenne Mountain at 0600 on a grey and dreary Monday morning, eighteen months, two weeks, and one day after they told her that she'd never walk again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	TAKE BACK PLENTY

**Author's Note:**

> See notes at end of Part One for notes. This is a note about that note.

Lt. Col. Cameron Evangeline Mitchell walks into Cheyenne Mountain at 0600 on a grey and dreary Monday morning, eighteen months, two weeks, and one day after they told her that she'd never walk again.

The next three hours are one hell of a rough landing. She asked for SG-1. General O'Neill said she could _have_ SG-1. When she gets to the Mountain, she finds that Sam's TDY and so's Master Teal'c.

And Dr. Jackson?

Well, she doesn't really get an answer to that from General Landry. And she for damned sure wants some answers from somebody, because General Landry was making noises about 'new team' and her leading it and that bites _royally._

Walter's a darling and in love with her instantly. But he shies like a spooked horse when she asks him about Dr. Jackson, and when she asks him where her office is, he suggests that she's really really busy.

"Aw, c'mon, Walter. Tell the truth an' shame the Devil," Cammie says.

Walter sighs. "She threw a coffee cup at the last person who opened her office door, ma'am. I'm sure she didn't mean to."

Cammie's pretty sure that nobody -- especially Dr. Danielle Jackson -- throws coffee cups at people by accident. Since it is currently 0915 on a Monday morning, it's hard to put it down to the stress of a rough week, either. "Full?" she asks with interest.

"Oh, no, ma'am," Walter says, sounding horrified.

"Wasn't you, was it?"

"No, ma'am," Walter says. And Cammie knows damned well there's something he isn't telling her, and that there's a fine but real line between information someone like Master Sergeant Walter Harriman will volunteer and information he will provide if asked.

"Well, it's like this, Walter," she says. "Colonel Carter isn't here, and Master Teal'c isn't here, so Dr. Jackson's about the only one I can go to for advice about SG-1, and I'm going to go do that. And if she's in a mood to part peoples' hair with coffee cups, I'd appreciate anything you could tell me to keep that from happening to me."

"Yes, ma'am," Walter says. "I just don't think she's very happy about being reassigned," he says, and Cammie's heart _sinks._ Because Sam's at Area 51 and Walter says she'll be back in a few weeks, and if she had Sam and Dr. Jackson she could convince Master Teal'c to sign on with her (he's rebuilding the Jaffa Nation), but reassignment isn't temporary. It's permanent.

"Reassigned? Where?" she asks.

"To a desk," Walter says.

#

She sits and ponders for about ten minutes after Walter leaves. All of it boiling down to _Cameron Evangeline, are you really going to do this crazy thing?_ Because it's one thing to tweak the CO's tail. It's another thing entirely to do it before you've been in your new command _one full day._

But he told her to pick her team.

She has.

#

When she goes down to Dr. Jackson's office, the door is closed. She opens it with reasonable care and steps inside, preparing to duck if necessary. What she sees makes her forget to close it.

Dr. Jackson is leaning back in her chair, attempting, with absolute concentration, to balance a pencil endwise on the end of her nose. Cammie's never quite been able to reconcile the Nowhere Field gossip about 'Dr. Jackson' with the few stories Sam told her about her friend Dani, and neither set of mental images really prepared her for this.

The pencil falls, and Dr. Jackson rocks forward in her chair and sees Cammie. There's a moment of stunned silence, then she gets to her feet, regarding Cammie with an expression that's more puzzled than anything else. (Out of the corner of her eye, Cammie can see that not only has traffic in the corridor outside Dr. Jackson's office come to a halt, they're beginning to collect an audience of interested gawkers. Obviously waiting for the girlfight to start.)

Dr. Jackson walks around her desk and over to Cammie, all the while _peering_ at her (frowning faintly now) as if she can't figure out who Cammie is (possible, from what Sam's said over the years) or what she's doing in her office (ditto) or (conceivably) she knows exactly who Cammie is and has been encouraged to think that it's because of Cammie's arrival that she's being chained to a desk.

Which is just (Cammie knows) how she's seeing it. And Cammie has no intention of letting it happen. If they're giving her SG-1 to lead, well and good. And one of the people in it is going to be Dr. Danielle Jackson. She smiles, slow and lazy ( _I'm not your enemy, babydoll, and you an' me, well, we'll just roll General Landry out like pastry dough before he realizes what's hit him._ ) "You an' me gon' be _juuuuus'_ fine," she drawls.

#

She spends the rest of the week getting checked-in (full physical and endless paperwork and meetings and orientation briefings.) Tuesday morning there was a tactful memo in her in-box asking if she'd reviewed the personnel files yet. She sent back a bright and cheerful memo saying she'd spoken to Dr. Jackson (true; she and Dani went out for dinner after Cammie spent the afternoon in Dani's office getting her head stuffed full of a scattershot unexpurgated lecture on everything she needed to know about the political history of the galaxy over the last twenty-five millennia and what she needed to do to stay alive in it _today_ and the woman has never met a subordinate clause she didn't like) and Dr. Jackson has agreed to rejoin SG-1 and so she'll only need two _temporary_ people until Colonel Carter and Master Teal'c return.

She hasn't gotten an answer to her memo by Friday morning when she's scheduled for her first trip through the Gate, on what's supposed to be a cakewalk to P5N-J43 (the SGC's had a cultural mission there for three years), and when she pre-briefed for it on Tuesday, she'd been assigned someone named Captain Acevedo as the other half of her military escort (the mission is to take two scientists -- Dr. Brian Hendrickson and Dr. Maria Rafferty -- to J43, pick up two scientists -- Dr. Ellen Lahoud and Dr. Ralph Perry -- party through the weekend, and come back), but when they do the final mission briefing on Thursday, Dani's not only doing the briefing (of course, and explains about how the SGC has gotten the Myrmiatians to stop their tradition of human sacrifice, which she's pretty pleased about, and seems prepared to go off on a tangent about the evolution of Greek religious traditions until General Landry glares at her) but everyone talks as if she'll be replacing Captain Acevedo on the trip, and come Friday, there she is.

It is strange beyond words to be walking into the gear-up room and seeing "SG-1" and her name on things. Dani's name is still on her locker (she comes pelting in at the last minute, dragging her pack; Angela said she always packs her own, and that Colonel O'Neill-as-was always said that Rule Number Four was 'Don't Ask What Dr. Jackson Has In Her Pack') and she smirks to see it.

That's funny, and stepping through the Stargate is a _rush_ and setting foot on _an actual alien planet_ is really cool. And everything goes to hell from there. Because when they get to the town, the first thing they see is Dr. Lahoud and Dr. Perry: dead, naked, garlanded in flowers, and hung up as sacrifices.

And Dani _swears_ (sounds like swearing; isn't in English) even as she's locking her hands behind her head (and the archers are stepping out of concealment) and then she starts shouting for Chief Satrial. She lectures the archers on the evolution of Greek religion all the way to the police station or temple or wherever it is they're dragged off to, explaining to them that only _complete fucking idiots_ return to human sacrifice after they've progressed to animal sacrifice.

They're searched (but not stripped), and all their gear is taken, and they're beaten, and in the course of the beating (of which Dani gets the brunt, because she gives the same lecture on religious practices to Chief Satrial and the attendant priests, and it does not go down at all well) they discover that the Myrmiatians are now trading with the Lucians for advanced technology, that they think she's Sam Carter, and there's been a change in the priesthood. For the worse, of course.

Then the two of them are thrown into a cell. And about five minutes after that, Dani starts taking off her clothes. Cammie watches in disbelief as she works her way down to sports bra and then rummages around inside it. She comes up with a pack of chewing gum -- Wrigley's Spearmint -- and a set of lockpicks. She offers the gum to Cammie and goes to work on the door.

Then it's skulk and run and hide and grab Brian and Maria and just about _hit Dani over the head_ (she wants to stay behind -- alone -- to argue with the Myrmiatian priesthood, apparently on the theory that she can _overthrow it by the force of her mind_ ) and a brisk five-mile run to the Gate, and they stop there while Dani takes off her _pants_ this time, because she's got a second GDO on her calf, wrapped in place with an Ace bandage.

And they're home.

On the way out of the Infirmary (stitches, and Dr. Tadeuszowska doesn't even bother to offer Dani painkillers or the usual bottle of Vicodin or T3 even though her face is starting to look like a piece of raw meat by now) Cammie tells Dani she should spend the weekend on the couch in front of the television with a bowl of chicken soup. And Dani just laughs and says she doesn't own a television and she can't cook.

And Cammie is horrified, which is how and why she shows up at Dani's apartment at two o'clock that Saturday with a large Tupperware container of chicken soup.

She thinks about her conversation with Sam (Wednesday), asking her when she was coming back, and Sam rolling her eyes and saying she deserved a nice long stress-free vacation, and saying that _IF_ Cammie got Dani back through the Gate, try not to get her killed, because General O'Neill got really cranky when that happened. (Cammie thinks about the gossip that trickled all the way out to Nowhere Field, about the Great Secret Love Story of the SGC.) And she hasn't really been able to stop thinking about the fact that Dani's died five times that are in the mission reports, and J43 could have been six, and there wouldn't have been any alien voodoo to bring her back this time and that is _not happening on Cammie's watch._

She smiles extra-pretty at somebody going out of Dani's building as she's walking up to the door (to make up for the fact she currently looks like the poster child for Domestic Violence, but hey, not the first time), so they go back and unlock the downstairs door for her. Then it's up four flights of stairs (building has a 'converted warehouse' look to it) and she's knocking on Dani's door.

There's no answer (no sound at all from inside, but she saw Dani's jeep parked downstairs), and just about the time Cammie's thinking that maybe she should've called ahead after all, there's a shadow on the other side of the peep-hole and then a lot of rattling and clicking (chain and a deadbolt; Cammie sees three key-locks on this side of the door and the door itself is metal.) Dani opens it cautiously, only a crack. "Cammie?" she says doubtfully.

"Jus' me," Cammie says brightly. "Brought you some soup."

"Okay," Dani says, and opens the door a little wider, then hooks her foot through it and _sweeps_ it wide and rolls back with her back flat against the wall beside it, leaving Cammie staring at an empty living room with all her instincts suddenly screaming _threat_ (scanning for targets and damming the fact that the soup isn't hot enough to make a decent weapon and she _isn't fucking carrying_ ) and flicking her eyes sideways to look at Dani. Who's got a handful of Beretta that she's pointing at the floor.

She relaxes with a sigh (can't be trouble in here if Dani's got a gun.) "Think we got 'em covered, Sundance," she says, keeping her voice even (holding on to that edge of temper that wants to put snap in it, because this has the flavor of New Kid hazing but her instincts are saying 'no.') She props the soup on her hip and pulls the door shut. Dani doesn't move until Cammie snaps the deadbolt -- not because she's worried about anything, but because she's been _trained._ Just the way Sam was. An access point isn't secure until it's secure.

"You expecting armed assault?" Cammie asks, as Dani pads off toward the kitchen.

"Huh?" Dani says, looking at her blankly. (The world's vaguest and most befuddled commando.) "Oh. Um. I didn't call for a pizza, and Sam's in Nevada and Jack's in Washington -- and they've got keys… Um. Hi?" she says hopefully. She opens a drawer and sets the 9mm back inside. Not a hazing, then (not that Cammie figured that was really Dani's style, even on less than a week's acquaintance.) She lets the mad go; Dani met her at the door with a gun perfectly seriously, and Cammie would like to know why.

It isn't urgent, though.

"Hi," she answers, setting the container of soup down on the kitchen counter. In a fight between Dani and a pizza right now, she'd bet money on the pizza; Dani's face is swollen and bruised, and if Cammie looks like a Domestic Violence poster, she's not quite sure how to categorize Dani: two black eyes, neat black line of stitches down the corner of her mouth, everything chipmunk-swollen. "Guess I should'a called ahead, but I figured, with you probably looking about as bad as I do you wouldn't be going out, and you said you don't cook..."

"Oh, worse," Dani says. She prods her glasses into a better alignment, grimacing, then reaches up to poke at the stitches, and winces. "No, um … it's a really long story, really. We have, uh, this thing, because, and … um… Would you like something to drink? I have beer, or I could make coffee..."

"Beer sounds good. Story, too, if you care to tell it. Might go better with food, though," Cammie says, "'Less you've already eaten?"

"Not since breakfast," Dani answers, wrapping her arms around her ribs (wincing again.) She's wearing an oversized sweatshirt that comes to mid-thigh and a pair of sweat-pants so big they overlap her feet. The cuffs are frayed where she's walked on them. "Yesterday," she adds. She opens the refrigerator to get Cammie the promised beer, and that's when Cammie discovers the hideous details of what 'I can't cook' means.

Dani's kitchen has a beautiful stainless-steel restaurant-grade refrigerator. It contains several gallons of water in one-liter bottles, several cases of beer, half a fossil pizza, a quart of orange juice, and various condiments. (The contents of her freezer, Cammie discovers later, is a five-pound bag of ice, an assortment of frozen candy bars, and three pints of ice cream.)

"What are you _eating?_ " Cammie demands in horror. Dani gestures toward the cupboards. And, well, Cammie has to get soup bowls out anyway. She steels herself for the worst, and encounters it head-on. Dani's cupboards contain cookies, Pop-Tarts, Scotch, coffee, and most of a Limoges china service for twelve. "You are going to die of _scurvy_ ," she says feelingly.

"Commissary," Dani answers, as if the food at the SGC Commissary were actual food. Oh, better'n some postings Cammie's had, granted. But in the first place, you can't _live_ on it. And in the second place, Dani doesn't live at the SGC. Cammie makes a non-committal noise, and they move on. Dani's taste in beers runs to the heavy, dark, and highly-alcoholic; Cammie gives her points for warning her that the beer she gives her has a higher alcohol content than regular American beer. They haven't gone out drinking together yet, so Dani doesn't know about Cammie's alcohol tolerance. It's a nice gesture. (Today is Saturday and she arrived on Monday and by now everybody at the SGC knows Dani's back on SG-1. Cammie's gotten all the in-house gossip by now, and a fair number of well-meant warnings. The commonest one boils down to 'Dr. Jackson doesn't pay attention to anything' (the second most common is 'Dr. Jackson is a royal pain in the ass so watch your back'), and Cammie doesn't think that's at all true (the first one, anyway; she's pretty sure the second one is true if you add the qualifier 'but worth it'.) Dani pays attention to _everything_. It's just that she doesn't always feel it necessary to let you know that she is -- either 'at all' or 'in a timely fashion.' And a lot of things she simply notes and ignores, Cammie's starting to figure.)

But she allows as how soup would be nice, and that should be simple, right? Find a pot, dump the soup in it, heat it up.

Nothing with Dani is ever that simple.

She has an restaurant-grade gas oven for which Cammie (having now cooked on that _piece of shit_ in her own kitchen, would cheerfully kill.) And the sum total of her kitchen appliances consists of a cookie sheet, her coffeemaker, and a spare carafe for her coffeemaker. Oh, yes. And her microwave. Well, they can heat up the soup a bowl at a time in the microwave. Momma will forgive her.

Cammie'd been making the (apparently wholly-unwarranted) assumption that Dani would have crackers. Or bread (she hadn't taken the time to make bread before she came, achy and daunted by the horror that is her kitchen, and now she's kicking herself for the lapse.) At least Dani has soup bowls in addition to bone-china soup _plates_ , and she quite happily eats three bowls of Cammie's chicken soup while giving her the long story about why being SG-1 means answering your own door with a gun in your hand as often as not. Cammie's pretty sure she doesn't mean her story to be a lesson, but she vows to take it to heart none the less. And she explains to Cammie about their simple safe-words -- you identify yourself with your own name at the door if you're all clear, use the other person's name if you're acting under duress. And Cammie hadn't done either one, and Dani hadn't taken the chance. There are things that Cammie can't bring herself to do no matter what (like make biscuits from a mix, or soup from a can), because she's sure that Momma will know and _do something_ , and apparently Dani has a similar incorporeal Jack O'Neill riding shotgun.

While they eat, Cammie takes a look around the living room. Not snooping. Just what she can see. It looks like a cross between a museum and a library, which is no more'n she'd expect, but it also looks as if well-educated baboons live here. Not dirty as such. Just … messy. (It comes up in the conversation that Dani has an SGC-vetted cleaning service but there are two times she doesn't like them coming into the place -- when she's there and when she isn't.)

After lunch, Dani puts up the coffee, and Cammie says that a couple of ibuprofen wouldn't kill her, especially now that she's got something in her stomach (painful to watch her wincing her way through lunch, and there hadn't been a whole lot of point in heating the soup up, really, since hot just makes her mouth hurt.) Dani says they're in the bathroom, and Cammie says she'll get them, since she needs to hit it up anyway (true enough, but she wants to snoop, too; Sam always called her a snoop and a sneak and a busybody, but Dani's hers now, and how is Cammie supposed to take care of her without full and accurate information?)

The bathroom is in the indefinite state between 'clean' and 'dirty,' making Cammie itch to come in and holystone it to within an inch of its upscale yuppie life. After she washes her hands, she checks the medicine cabinet. Not much there other than First Aid supplies (although those are extensive) and a half-full bottle of ibuprofen.

And she _knows_ how much pain Dani's in, and it would be the simplest thing in the world to swap out the T3s from the bottle in her bag for what's left in the bottle of ibuprofen (and back again before she leaves, so as not to be leaving mislabeled pills lying around.) And God knows she's not above pulling a fast one (or two) in the name of friendship: 'Screw the Prime Directive' has always been something of a Mitchell family motto. And Dani needs the relief; she needs the rest.

And if Cammie does that, she'll lose Dani's trust, probably forever. So she takes the bottle of ibuprofen back to the kitchen, and Dani shakes out four and gulps them down with some bottled water, and about an hour after that she's sprawled out on a throw-pillow in the middle of the living-room floor, fast asleep, and Cammie is trying to make herself comfortable on _the world's most uncomfortable couch_ and deciding what she's going to feed them for dinner.

Because she's learned a lot this week about her new life, and even more today, and she's made a lot of decisions, too. And one of those decisions is that Dani Jackson is not going to spend the rest of her life living in the next thing to an urban slum on takeout pizza and Pop-Tarts. Not now that Cammie's here to take care of her.

#

Sunday she spends baking, because she has a long list of people she's (mentally) promised cookies to, and she makes up a double-batch of bread, and doubles the recipe again at the last minute, which is a damned good thing, as the fucking oven is a _limb of Satan_ and the first batch manages to be raw and burnt at the same time. And Sam's coming for dinner this week, and Cammie's promised to feed her, and at this rate it's going to be barbeque in the parking lot. She manages to baby-sit the second batch through, and she didn't trust the looks of that damned oven in the first place, so none of the cookies she's made up are the fussy or delicate recipes, but the thought of trying to bake a pie in there makes her blood run cold (leaving aside the fact that she broke a damned nail trying to get off some of the baked-on grunge; getting that oven really clean might just call for high explosives, which could only improve the kitchen overall.)

But around about mid-afternoon she's got about twelve-dozen cookies and a pot of beef-barley soup and two loaves of bread (and it should have been four God damn and blast all rental-unit ovens to _hell and back_ ) so then she calls up Dani and when she answers Cammie tells her that she probably doesn't have any more food in her kitchen than she did yesterday, and if it's okay, she'll be over in about an hour with soup.

There's a really long pause. "It's okay, Cammie. I didn't think he'd let you get away with it. But how come he called you on a Sunday? Because you don't get your laptop until next week, right?"

 _This,_ Cammie thinks sagely, _is why ever'body's been tellin' you that ever'body here drinks_. She glances over at her desk. "Got my laptop right here, baby," she says.

"No, no, no. Your _new_ laptop. With the software."

New-laptop-with-the-security-and-encryption-software, Cammie fills in mentally. On which she can log in to the SGC Mainframe from home, if she wants to borrow trouble. Which she doesn't have, so she can't have done, which means (solving for X) that Dani's assuming that somebody from the SGC called her with news and that's why Cammie is calling her and offering to bring food.

Her _brain_ hurts. "Nobody called me and I haven't called anybody," she says.

"Then why do you want to bring me soup?" Dani demands, and she sounds so suspicious that Cammie forces herself to stifle a laugh.

"I'm worried about you starving to death before Monday morning," she says dryly. "Baked bread, too."

"Okay," Dani says, in the faintly puzzled tone that people get when other people tell them random inexplicable things.

"And I will be there in about an hour," Cammie says. They're apparently back on-track by that point, because Dani tells her that if the downstairs door is locked, just phone.

Before she goes, Cammie sorts out a big box of her second-best kitchen gear (the stuff for which there isn't any damned room in the micro-kitchen) to take with her. There will, by God, be a pot to heat soup in Dani's kitchen if she has to loan it to her her own self.

#

Over soup (and Cammie stopped at a Qwik-Mart for milk and butter and a six-pack, because while she doesn't necessarily take against The Beers of H. P. Lovecraft (black, lurking, and Not Of This Earth) they aren't her favorite thing with dinner) and bread and butter (and there's a twelve-foot antique oak dining table in the corner under all those books just crying out for a good polishing) they untangle the phone conversation. Apparently Dani figured General Landry'd gone and dug his heels in about her being back in the field, and Cammie assures her it ain't gonna happen, and then her _skin just crawls_ as Dani blithely outlines her fallback plan if it did: resign from the SGC, end-run around the IOA, assignment to Atlantis as a civilian specialist (and she'd been on her way to that the day Cammie walked in the door.) "Bet _Elizabeth_ would let me go into the field," she says darkly, and Cammie assures her -- again -- that she's going to be up to her ass in fieldwork here.

"Oh, good," Dani says blandly. "I'd really miss being shot at, imprisoned, and threatened with death, you know."

"Yeah," Cammie says. "Strange the things you miss."

"No," Dani says, and she's perfectly serious, and it's only when she says it that Cammie realizes she was thinking of the things (the people) she misses: Kate and John and Brian and all her brave and beautiful boys and girls; the shimmer of blue against the black when you're at the very edge of atmosphere. And Cammie blinks and sighs. _Let it go, Mama Bear._ She has new people who need her now.

Dani didn't even blink at the notion that a good portion of Cammie's kitchen was going to come and live in hers, and after dinner (Dani has coffee and a second beer, Cammie just has a second beer) Cammie bitches high wide and handsome about having to put together a meal fit for human consumption (or even Sam Carter) in _the kitchen from hell_ (with a side order of wondering if she can get Master Teal'c to come for the meal -- and of course Dani's invited too -- because she is not above enlisting a little help in that, and she figures at the very least Dani can give her advice on how to ask him.)

"Is this kitchen better than yours?" Dani asks, frowning. "I mean -- if you used it -- I know cooking makes a mess -- Sam cooks sometimes -- it would all stay in the kitchen? It's just-" she shrugs "-some of my books are delicate. But if it is, and it would, why don't you cook for Sam here?"

"Dani, are you _sure?_ " Cammie asks carefully. She'll take 'crazy' and 'pain-in-the-ass' and 'malicious' with a small Siberian salt mine, but _Sam_ told her in a warning way that Dani takes a while to warm up to people sometimes.

"I'm sure I'm offering you the use of my kitchen if you aren't going to make a mess outside it," Dani answers, sounding equally cautious.

"I'll take it," Cammie says instantly. "Oh thank God; I was afraid I was going to have to feed her scrambled eggs and I would _never_ hear the end of it."

"And I can ask T if he'd like to come to dinner, but I won't know until tomorrow if we're scheduled to check-in with Dakara this week, and General Landry…" Dani sighs. "General Landry doesn't like us using the Stargate to make personal calls."

#

Week Two at the SGC is more GTO (lectures and briefings) and around the edges of it Cammie is supposed to be picking the other two members of her team. Sam's due in on Wednesday, which doesn't give her much time for ranging shots with Dani's oven; Dani's a little surprised come Monday to have Cammie transfer four boxes of pots and pans from her car to Dani's Jeep at the end of the day and tell her she'll be over to cook dinner as soon as she's done the grocery shopping. (There's no check-in with Dakara scheduled this week, but Master Teal'c might check in with them, and Cammie's let Walter know to tell him that Dani wants to talk to him if he does.)

If she's going to cook dinner (something quick and easy that won't fight back too much, even though Dr. Tadeuszowska took Dani's stitches out today, so Cammie decides on spaghetti) she might as well do a cake, too, since the point is to figure out the oven, and if she's doing a cake, the oven'll be hot anyway, so she can do a few sheets of cookies so as to not get too far behind, and if she's in the kitchen _anyway_ , might as well take a swing at some bread, since bread is the make-or-break of an oven.

And in between the cooking and the organizing of Dani's kitchen (pots and pans and all the food supplies from Cammie's shopping to put away -- Dani regards them warily and Cammie swears they'll be out of her way as soon as she's fed Sam) they review the personnel files _in absentia_. 'Jackass' and 'moron' and 'knuckle-dragging grave-robber' are terms Dani bandies about freely enough, but she can also cut the moonlight and roses and rattle off most of the assignment history of most of the names on Cammie's list, and SG-1 has served in the field with most of the teams. She'll tell Cammie as much as she knows about the people who are (most of them) just names to Cammie right now (and freely admits she has no idea of what a military commander is looking for in all the ways that will make _this_ heavy-weapons specialist or _that_ hard-science generalist better than another who looks identical on paper) but she does give her one piece of advice:

"Don't take anybody who asked for reassignment from their original team. Doesn't matter what reason they give, or what anybody says. None of them's ever lasted more than another twelve months in the field."

"They quit?" Cammie kind of doubts it, but she'd like it spelled out.

Dani looks at her and her mouth twitches a little (bruises're fading.) "They die. Sometimes they take their whole team with them."

"Good to know," Cammie says briskly. She pauses, cocks her head. "You ever mention this to anyone?"

Dani sighs. "It's a coincidence. Ask anyone." She waves a hand. "Pattern only popped up a couple of years ago. Program's understaffed. Commander's discretion. I mean, it's not like…" she shrugs.

 _Seventy percent._ Cammie thinks. _Seventy percent of all Gate Team personnel die, or go crazy, or both within the first twelve months of active service._ "I think the cookies are ready to come out of the oven," she says.

#

Tuesday is more of the same (more lectures, more briefings, more cookware moved over to Dani's kitchen, more shopping -- this time for the menu -- dinner again.) Dani says Cammie doesn't have to feed her and besides she isn't hungry; Cammie says she has to feed herself so she might as well feed Dani too (and despite her protests, Dani eats when Cammie puts the food in front of her.) No cookies tonight; she's going to make pies (and _granite countertops_ ; she can roll the dough right out on them.)

After the dinner dishes are squared away -- Cammie still _cringes_ to see Dani dump the Limoges into the dishwasher, but apparently that's what she usually does with it and her sterling too (Cousin Mary Ellen Grace would have cat fits) -- Dani settles in the dining room part of the living room at the table with her laptop and her books. (Cammie's going to need to see if they can possibly shift them for tomorrow night or they're going to be eating standing up in the kitchen.) She wanders in and out at intervals to refill her mug from the coffeemaker on the counter; Cammie makes up some little scraps of filling and crust into fold-over tarts, because it isn't fair to smell up a kitchen this way and not have anything to eat at the end of it (Dani made her take half the sheet-cake from yesterday home with her and it went in to work with her this morning, and Cammie parceled it out special, and made sure there was a piece for General Landry too since no point in making an outright enemy of the man.) When the last of the pies comes out of the oven (and oh lord, if she were in the market, Cammie would seriously consider _proposing marriage_ to Dani's oven) she pops in the sheet of tartlets and goes to tell Dani that dessert will be ready in a few minutes.

It takes a good two minutes before Dani lifts her head to make eye-contact (Cammie doesn't rush her; she might have only been at the SGC a week and a half, but she's been here long enough to know that -- this being Dani Jackson aside -- this is the kind of post where you're going to live and die by the technical specialists on your team, not necessarily by who can put the prettiest grouping into a target, and even if it weren't her own personal habit to show people respect, it's a good habit to get into not to joggle people's elbows when they might be putting together the bit of something that will save your life later.) It's about another ten seconds before Dani's eyes track and focus on her.

"Dessert's almost ready," Cammie says. (And then she explains that yes, the pies are for tomorrow. Yes, she said Dani was to stay out of them. This is something else. Something for now. And then Dani's eyes focus even more and they have the whole conversation over again, by which time it's time to go take the tartlets out of the oven, at which point Dani is wildly indignant over the fact that they have to be let to _cool_ , which at least allows Cammie a conversational gap into which to introduce the concept of 'cleaning off the dining room table.')

Dani sighs, regarding the table, and allows as how she'll get it cleared by tomorrow (which Cammie guesses means pretty much that Dani and Sam will be excavating it just before they lay out the plates for supper, and that's something best left to Sam, who's known Dani for eight years.)

#

Wednesday Sam grabs her out of her last-lecture-before-lunch (how to deal with an offworld mission if it doesn't go 'according to plan', and while the advice isn't _completely stupid_ (she can hear Dani's voice inside her head), Cammie pities any team that has to operate entirely on the basis of what they hear here (the part on determining just when your mission has gone south is particularly entertaining. When they _throw you in fucking jail_, of course.) There's a little too much emphasis on either negotiation or force and too little on just _running like hell_ , in Cammie's opinion) and they head off to the Commissary.

Wednesday's lasagna, and the lasagna is horrible, so Cammie settles for a sandwich (and chips, because you can't ruin a bag of chips, but she's not sure what the hell they do to the potatoes, whether boiled, mashed, or french-fried) and they settle down in the corner to catch up on gossip. Cammie makes her pitch for Sam to come back to SG-1. Sam sings a 'never happen' song about the wonderful research opportunities available in Nevada, the peace and quiet-

"The _boredom!_ " Cammie sings out. "C'mon, Sam, don't tell me you don't miss this place?" And Sam hesitates just a beat too long before assuring Cammie that of course she misses her friends, but eight years is a long time at one command and she's happy where she is. _Gotcha,_ Cammie thinks. All that's left is to reel her in. "'D'think you'd wanna be where you could keep me out of trouble," she says innocently, and they both have a good laugh over that, before moving on to dinner tonight, and Sam says she's really happy that Cammie and Dani are taking to each other so well.

And for just a moment she looks as if she'll go on, and now, finally, she _could_ \-- because Cammie's finally on the inside of the thing that's kept her and Sam apart for going on a decade, even after Cammie was in the 302 Program -- but if she did, she'd be breaking confidence (and Sam Carter isn't people-smart -- not like Cammie is -- but she won't peach on a friend.) And it's frustrating as hell, because while it's nice to know that she's got the inside track, it would be _really_ nice to have a _road map_. So they move on to other things, and Sam says she really hopes Teal'c will be able to make it tonight, and Cammie says that it'll probably be pretty short notice for him since he hasn't checked in with the SGC this week (unspoken, the statement that they couldn't call him; not Dani to chat, and not Cammie to invite him to dinner.)

And Sam tells her about the early months of the Program, when the lights would dim all over the Base every time they fired up the Gate, and about how a week's worth of a standard mission schedule burns a few million dollars just sending people offworld (to the point that apparently there's a proposal in Washington right now to send the entire week's worth of outgoing teams to the Alpha Site in one batch and have them go on from there, because the Alpha Site Stargate uses a DHD, and they generate power internally), but that Dani asked Colonel Reynolds to dial Dakara when he was offworld next (which would have been Tuesday, Cammie thinks, not because she knows the mission roster one way or the other, but because her office is right around the corner from the Control Room so she saw SG-3 head offworld) and pass a message.

"She writes him letters," Sam says, smiling and faintly bemused.

"Does he answer 'em?" Cammie asks, because she has _just got to know._

"Well… yeah," Sam says (sounding even more puzzled), "he does. He brings them with him when he comes back, but … he answers them."

"Oh, that's just cool," Cammie says, shaking her head admiringly, and Sam smiles.

At the moment Cammie's days end at 1700 on the dot, and she hates to ask the favor, so she starts by asking Sam what she thinks Dani's reaction would be if she asked her if it was okay for her and Sam to go over to Dani's place right at end-of-shift so she could start cooking (doesn't want to make assumptions about hustling Dani out of the Mountain early three days running, and she knows -- from last week -- that Dani considers end-of-shift 'early.')

And Sam laughs and says, "I thought you invited her to dinner," and when Cammie looks puzzled, relents and adds, "Okay, you don't know her and she's obviously been on her best behavior. Here's how it will go. You'll tell her to show up at -- say -- 1900. She'll say yes. Forty minutes after she's supposed to be there you'll call her cell -- no answer -- and finally try her office line. She'll pick up, and say she's on her way out the door. And let's say you believe her. About the time you expect her to be walking in the door you'll get a call -- if you're lucky -- and it will be her, and she'll say she just has to do one more thing. Or that she's just leaving now. Or… Really, Cammie, anything's possible. If you want her to show up tonight, we'd better take her with us."

"A'ight," Cammie says. "I'm putting you in charge of making sure she doesn't _kill me_ for blowing her schedule all to hell one more time." She gets to her feet. Lunchtime's over, and the afternoon is going to be spent on "Current Galactic Political Trends." Part history lesson, part SG Team shopping list, a few words to the wise. The main thing these briefings and lectures give her is a list of questions (usually starting with _are these people serious?_) that are always entertaining to take to Dani, if only to watch her blink. (Cammie doesn't need much more than that to see how far short of practicality the Orientation Briefings fall.)

#

At the other end of the day (thrilled, exasperated, enlightened, and oh, yeah, there's _yet another memo_ from Graham in her in-box tactfully wondering if she's filled out SG-1 yet) she heads down to Dani's office, because she suspects that no matter how much in the way of reports and lab-work Sam's supposed to be getting up to while she's here, she's going to be catching up.

She gets to the door -- it's open -- and she can hear both Sam and Dani talking at once. Not like arguing; more like both tryin' to get to the finish line at once. And she walks inside. Sam's perched on a stool, Dani's sitting on the edge of her desk. And just as Cammie's registering that there's someone else in the room, he stands up.

And up. And up.

Cameron Mitchell is a good solid six feet in her stocking feet -- which gives her three inches on Sam and six on Dani -- and this man _towers_ over her. Robed, and with a gilded _Goa'uld_ -mark (familiar from her briefing books) on his forehead.

"Teal'c, this is Colonel Cameron Mitchell," Dani says. "Cammie, this is Master Teal'c of Chulak."

Cammie steps forward, starts to hold out her hand and then remembers it isn't a gesture the Jaffa use. He bows (and she doesn't know Jaffa, but she certainly knows the old dragons of Gran'ma's social circle, and that bow means 'I'm taking you under advisement.') "I am most pleased to make your acquaintance, Colonel Mitchell. Danielle Jackson has conveyed to me your invitation to dinner."

She stops herself in the middle of saying that it's nothing fancy, because the last thing she's ever going to do is apologize for a meal she's put on the table up to the point she's actually _killed_ somebody with it. "I've been looking forward to meeting you too, Master Teal'c, and I'm real glad you could make it." She glances at Dani. "I'm going to need to get started right away on dinner."

"Leaving here now. Driving straight to your apartment, and going inside. Right now," Sam says helpfully (which gives Cammie a big hint about how much of an Earth-to-Dani Dictionary she's gonna need sometimes, but it still sounds like the kind of smack that only old friends can get away with without it just sounding rude.)

Dani glances over her shoulder at the surface of her desk. "Um," she says, sounding guilty.

"No," Sam says in an 'I can't believe you're trying to pull this _now_ tone of voice.

"I shall convey Danielle Jackson to her apartment at the appropriate hour. Without fail," Teal'c says.

"Great," Cammie says. "See you two there at 1900."

Dani's already back around the other side of her desk digging through papers when Cammie and Sam walk out.

"Okay," Cammie says. "How 'bout the version with footnotes for the new kid?" Because she'd heard all the jokes about 'SG-1 Telepathy' -- since the day she set foot in the SGC, she thinks she's heard just about every SG-1 joke there is -- and while she hadn't completely disbelieved it, that's not the same thing as _seeing_ it. (Any close-knit unit's got at least its close cousin, and she knows they don't mean to shut her out, but right now she misses the 'Skinners so bad it hurts.)

Sam blinks, and Cammie sees her wind back to what just happened and look a little embarrassed. "Oh. Dani was about to say she had just one more thing to do that had to get done before she left, and, oh, it might even be true; she's been bitching since- um, for a while, that she keeps getting hit with rush projects either at the end of the day or the end of the week, and she's the only one fluent in a couple of key dialects. And I was going to tell her that she absolutely couldn't, not tonight, and if it was that much of a rush just bring it with her or come back, so Teal'c said he'd be sure she arrived on time. He will. Don't worry."

#

They drive on over to Dani's in Miss Mam'zelle (Cammie says that Sam can crash with her tonight, since having to bunk on-Base sucks, and Sam hems and haws and admits she never did sell her house here and it's turn-key ready and Cammie snickers and Sam insists hotly that it doesn't mean anything and Cammie whoops) stopping to pick up a few last-minute things (Teal'c's favorite kind of juice, some other kinds -- just for the hell of it and as long as they're there -- vodka, tequila, bourbon, beer) and then arrive at the apartment.

The table (just as Cammie expected) is still covered in books. "You wanna clear that off?" she asks. It's not exactly a serious suggestion; she's more curious than anything.

"The Air Force only pays me to get killed in the line of duty," Sam says dryly.

#

She figured on a nice simple menu she's been making since she was a baby and can cook in her sleep: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits, gravy, green beans, and pie to follow. She sets Sam to peeling potatoes while she starts the biscuits, washes the green beans (ready to cook at the last minute), joints enough chicken to feed SG-3 and dredges it, then comes back around and helps peel.

"I can't believe she's letting you take over her kitchen this way," Sam says.

"You're damned lucky she is or you'd be getting Micky D's tonight," Cammie answers. "Long's I don't get flour on any'a her books, she said it's okay. 'Sides, I feed her."

Sam makes a rude noise, whipping peels onto the newspaper at her feet (they both swiped chairs from the dining set; the kitchen is -- just -- big enough to accommodate them if you don't have to move around in it too much.) "How many impossible things do you expect me to believe before breakfast anyway? Or in this case, dinner?"

"God's truth," Cammie says. "We got back from that jailbreak and I brought her over some soup. Samantha Eileen, you should hang your head in shame letting that poor child _starve_ herself."

"We're talking about Dani, right?" Sam says (she doesn't look particularly ashamed, either, just slightly puzzled) "I think now that you're at the SGC you can stand to know the truth: she's older than you are. And if you came over with soup and a hot water bottle, I'm surprised she didn't _shoot_ you."

"Didn't say nothin' about a hot water bottle," Cammie says right back, "just Momma's chicken noodle soup, and you've never objected to it in your life. As for shootin' me, she _did_ answer the door with gun in hand, and could might you forgot to tell me a few things I'd need to know before I went knocking on doors around here?"

"Oh… you didn't call first," Sam says weakly.

"No," Cammie says. "And she didn't shoot me. Pretty good fire discipline," she says, quirking a grin at Sam.

"General O'Neill insisted," Sam says, and for a moment her eyes go all soft with remembering. "Oh, god, Cammie. We were hopeless! I had a Master Marksman's badge -- you know that -- but I'd never been in ground combat! Teal'c was so good that you'd forget who -- what -- you were dealing with half the time. The, uh, the _Goa'uld_ aren't really big on flexibility and initiative, and it's not that he'd freeze up, but… And Dani was…" she stops.

"Sam," Cammie says (putting just a touch of warning into her voice.) "She's on my team now."

Sam sighs ruefully (never has been able to stand up to Cammie when she's really wanted something, and that's why they both know there's going to be an 'SG-1' patch on Sam's shoulder again before the year is out.) "That was eight years ago, so it doesn't really count now. She was … easily distractible. Great in any fight that involved beer bottles as weapons. And it's not that she wasn't a team player. It's that she expected to take care of herself. By herself."

 _'The team takes care of the team.'_ Or the squad, or the flight, or the unit, or whatever it happens to be. If it's in combat. It's your mother, father, sister, brother, lover, and father confessor. The first place you run and sometimes the last faces you see (oh god she misses her kids.) And Sam's telling her that Dani was a team player while giving her the very definition of somebody who wasn't. (And yes, 'wasn't' is the word, because that was eight years ago and she thinks of P5N-J43 and Dani might have been just a little confused about who was _in charge_ of the Milk Run From Hell, but she was deadly determined to get all four of them home.)

And because it _isn't_ true now, it can be a joke, so Cammie makes it one. "I got to wonder how you folks ever survived."

Sam makes her Innocent Face. "I thought you'd seen all the reports by now. We didn't. We all died about three months into our first year of missions."

#

They laugh and sass each other while Cammie gets everything done that can get done before Dani and Teal'c get here, which is almost everything (snap beans go on last thing, potatoes go on to boil at a quarter of, chicken starts frying _after_ she's sure they've got everyone here. She asks Sam if Dani's got a tablecloth for that table, and Sam has no idea. Sam's helped Dani move through three apartments, but she's got no real clue about Dani's household goods.

Because she knows damned well Cammie's going to mock her for that (by the first time Cammie'd moved _her_ , Cammie knew everything about Sam right down to the number and colors of her skivvies) she decides to distract her by listing the apartments: the fancy place downtown Dani moved into right back from Abydos, the place she moved into four years later because she'd tried to jump off her eighth floor balcony and couldn't bear to be living up that high any more, and this place that she'd moved to six months later (breaking her lease on the other place) because it was on a lower floor but the windows were too big.

It's an offhand comment, but it gets all of Cammie's attention, sudden and sharp, because people don't do things like that unless it's more than just a _preference._ "Problem?" she asks. This place has plenty of light, but except for the sliding glass doors and one window in the living room, it has almost no windows at all (and Cammie thinks back: yes, the bedroom window is so high up the wall that you can't see out it.)

Sam shakes her head. "If it were, she'd pull the plug herself. Cammie, she _hates_ heights, but Out There I've watched her do things that, well -- _I'd_ think twice. Don't worry."

"Only thing I'm worryin' about is findin' something to throw over that table if the top of it ever sees the light a' day," she says easily. Problem not necessarily solved, but it's hers to deal with, and Dani's, if it's going to be one.

At 1900 on the dot, Master Teal'c and Dani walk in. They're having a cheerful conversation, and Dani's gesturing and Master Teal'c's nodding, and it takes Cammie's brain a second to catch up to the fact that what she's hearing isn't English. Then they see her, and all of a sudden, it is.

"-so I told him he'd lose that bet, but it was going to have to wait until you were here to settle it. Or he could just believe me and pay up now."

"I do not believe that this a traditional method of settling wagers of this nature among your people, Danielle Jackson."

"Well, yes, I could've just _shot_ him, but then Two would need another CO and Nate _likes_ Major Castleman," she says reasonably.

"Who you gonna shoot?" Cammie asks with interest. It'll be a few more days yet before she's got everybody's names and faces straight.

"Well, Teal'c says I can't shoot anybody," Dani answers, sounding put-out about it.

"Good evening, Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c says. "I thank you once again for this invitation."

"Pleasure's mine," Cammie says. "'Preciate the chance to cook for more'n just me an' sometimes Dani here. And we're not on the Mountain, so it's 'Cammie,' okay?"

"Good luck," she hears Dani mutter.

"And Sam was just tellin' me she was gonna open those sliders and dump ever'thing on your dining room table out into the parking lot to clear us some room," Cammie adds.

 _"Cameron Evangeline!"_ Sam yelps. Sam might not have all or even most of the Family's customs down, but she's mastered the Invocation Of The Sacred Middle Name. "I did _not!_ "

"Well _somebody_ did," Cammie says innocently, "an' it couldn't'a been me. I hardly know her."

"I'm pretty sure being jailed together is the equivalent of a formal introduction," Dani says. She heads on into the kitchen, roots around in her refrigerator until she's dug out a beer and a bottle of juice, passes the juice to Teal'c, and walks off into the living room.

Cammie starts in on the chicken and lets Sam take the first shift on the potatoes (Sam's okay in a kitchen if you keep an eye on her) and the trays of biscuits are ready to go into the oven just as soon as the last of the chicken goes into the pan. About ten minutes in, Dani comes into the kitchen to ask if Cammie means _all_ the books, and Sam says, "Yes," without missing a beat. "And don't just pile them under the table, either," she adds, and Dani goes off again. Another ten minutes (potatoes done and into the oven to keep warm; she added a touch extra cream because of that) and Dani's back again, so this time Cammie asks her if she has a tablecloth. ("One that will cover the entire table," Sam adds.) Dani says she isn't sure, but she'll look. Cammie tells her to put a sheet over it if she doesn't, because Momma will _rise up out of the grave she isn't in yet_ if Cammie puts supper plates down on that wood bare.

Teal'c (who's followed Dani back and forth each time like the world's largest and scariest bodyguard) stays put this time, and wishes to know how he can be of service. And Cammie assures him that it's all done, really, almost, she's just got these bits of chicken to fry up, then the biscuits to bake and the green beans to cook (which won't take a minute) and then a nice pan of gravy (because you can't have potatoes and biscuits without gravy) and they're done. Teal'c asks her if this is a simple meal, and Sam says that it is in Cammie's world, and Cammie says that she is perfectly capable of answering a simple question, and Dani comes back and says that she found a tablecloth, but it's white.

"White is traditional, so I have been given to understand," Teal'c says.

"But we're having blackberry pie for dessert," Dani answers.

"And we're probably not eating it off the tablecloth," Cammie says. "Even if we are, I know just about ever'thing about getting stains out of fabric."

"Including bloodstains," Sam mutters.

"Yeah, I don't need you in the kitchen right now, move out," Cammie says.

Chicken's fried, biscuits are in (and potatoes are out) beans are on and she's whisking up the gravy. Only Momma can get all the lumps out, but Momma's also said that nobody's ever left the table over a few lumps in the gravy. She gets the beans away from any heat just before they're cooked (physics isn't all about making the Stargate work) and pokes her head out of the kitchen just as Dani's coming in.

"Sam said you'd kill me but I thought I'd see if you needed help," Dani says.

 _"You_ get dessert," Cammie says. "I'm still making my mind up about Sam. Set the table for me, would you, sugarpie? And if anybody else wants to help, you jus' send 'em on in."

She's expecting Sam. She isn't expecting Teal'c. But then she decides that it isn't fair for him to be the only one treated like a guest just because he's the only one she doesn't know, so she hands him the platter of fried chicken and sends him on out. It's only two or three trips before everything's on the table. She's the last one out of the kitchen.

The table … is more than a surprise. The 'white tablecloth' is a heavy linen brocade tablecloth, slightly yellowed with age, and creased from years of storage. It fits perfectly. With it all spread out (and the table completely cleared) it looks like all you really need to add is Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, and a couple of rapiers.

There are even candlesticks: heavy and silver (just tarnished enough that Cammie itches to give them a good polishing) and they've even got candles in them, and Teal'c looks approving, and Cammie suspects they were his idea. She doesn't think Dani would think of them, and she knows Sam wouldn't suggest them.

There's a pitcher of sweet tea on the table to go with dinner, but in addition to the tumblers, there are wine glasses too, and there's a bottle on the table, and Cammie has no idea where it came from or how it got there. It's already been opened. Sam's looking smug and a little teary-eyed and proud as she hands the bottle to Teal'c. He pours for all of them -- just a touch in his own glass.

"Before we eat," Dani says, "I'd, um, like to propose a toast. I've been here longest. I, um, I think I actually have Jack beat by five minutes. Anyway. To us. To SG-1."

She looks at Cammie and smiles, and for one moment the only thought in Cammie's mind is: _oh, I can't -- I'm not ready!_ But she takes a deep breath and drinks with the rest of them, because the only time it's proper to drink when you're the subject of the toast is when what's being saluted is your unit.

She's SG-1 now.

 

###

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part of what will be much longer when it's done. It's a Cammie'verse/Daniverse AU/Fusion, where Jack is in love with Sam, Dani's been covering for both of them for years by pretending it's her and Jack who have the Great Secret Love, and Dani's going to fall in love with the last person she expects to.
> 
> This is a close-order remix of the first story in my and Synecdochic's co-committed Cammie'verse, after which it goes all over the place.


End file.
